Where your money goes

Comment: Now, could we please stop talking about how we need more taxes to pay for roads and bridges or to help the poor? The main function of our government is to write checks to middle-class and wealthy voters. And that’s the reason its finances are in the toilet.

This means Elizabeth Warren, for example, who said a factory owner needs to pay more taxes because “you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” Answer: you paid for that long ago. That’s not where the money is going.

This means Robert Frank, whose NYT “Economics view” argued for “higher taxes needed for improved infrastructure” and claimed “when the anti-tax wealthy make campaign contributions, they are buying only the deeper potholes and dirtier air that inevitably result when tax revenue is low.” No, that’s not where the money is going either.